POS acer problems

[lust]

I have an Acer laptop that I brought from Canada which is about 5 years old. I had been getting an system error message anytime that i would reboot it. I forget what the code would say when it would pop up but i would just close it and continue.

Today when i turned it i dont get the error message anymore but for whatever reason it sounds like my speakers are blown.. they have popping and scratching sounds which it has never done before. i thought maybe it was a soundcard driver issue but when i use my hdmi to connect to the tv the sound plays fine through the tv,

Also another issue is overheating. It gets so bloody hot. If I dont have the air condition on it will just shut off. i always need to prop things under it too let the hot air escape.

any tips?

[kkerry]

Have you ever opened it, cleaned out the insides and checked to see the fan is still working?

If you don't know how to, then plenty of repair shops will do it for you while you wait for a few hundred baht, maybe even replace the thermal paste on the CPU as well.

[RichCor]

HDMI audio is sent digitally and sound rendered by the HDMI device. So not a good test.

The quickest way to verify what the issue *might* be would be to boot with a Linux Live distro with a working sound driver and verify if the sound issues continued, then it would be hardware based (electronic or physical)

[lostinisaan]

First, you’ll have to clean your machine up. You wouldn't believe how much dust you’ll find inside your notebook after 5 years, especially here in Thailand.

There’s a fantastic program called hard drive sentinel pro, you can find it on the bay. It checks your machine’s temperature, but also your hard drive’s health.

Hard drives usually have a life span of one to five years. A 500 GB hard drive for your Acer is about 1,700 baht, if you don’t need a SSD drive.

I don’t think that your speakers blew, it could be a bad connection of your sound card to the motherboard, or dust. Or your hard drive.

Once you've installed hard drive Sentinel, and your machine gets hotter than 50 degrees Celsius, then you have a cooling problem.

Good luck with troubleshooting. I’d think twice to bring it to a no name shop, where they don’t understand much about Technic.

What system are you running? If you have W 7, just update your driver(s). Where are you located?

Edited October 25, 2014 by lostinisaan

[Pinot]

Five years on a laptop is about it. Plenty of laptops available in the low price range that will be better than paying to fix an old laptop.

[lostinisaan]

Five years on a laptop is about it. Plenty of laptops available in the low price range that will be better than paying to fix an old laptop.

I a sort of disagree. Why not trying to fix it? Can't be that expensive.

[RichCor]

Five years on a laptop is about it. Plenty of laptops available in the low price range that will be better than paying to fix an old laptop.

I a sort of disagree. Why not trying to fix it? Can't be that expensive.

"Can't be that expensive."

This is when probabilities come in to play with 'older' equipment and the actual repair vs acquire-new cost cannot be predicted.

Is it a better 'bet' to spend a little bit of money and go for the fix/repair/part-replacement, or will ongoing cascading failures put your, now multiple, low-cost repairs near to or equal with the cost of acquiring a new unit?

When will the next part fail? If a part is replaced will it put strain on other parts? Will the same part fail again?

...and then there's the trade-off between a new computer having increased speed, more RAM, higher-res screen, etc, etc, vs your software library being incompatible and requiring the purchasing upgrades.

[lostinisaan]

Five years on a laptop is about it. Plenty of laptops available in the low price range that will be better than paying to fix an old laptop.

I a sort of disagree. Why not trying to fix it? Can't be that expensive.

"Can't be that expensive."

This is when probabilities come in to play with 'older' equipment and the actual repair vs acquire-new cost cannot be predicted.

Is it a better 'bet' to spend a little bit of money and go for the fix/repair/part-replacement, or will ongoing cascading failures put your, now multiple, low-cost repairs near to or equal with the cost of acquiring a new unit?

When will the next part fail? If a part is replaced will it put strain on other parts? Will the same part fail again?

...and then there's the trade-off between a new computer having increased speed, more RAM, higher-res screen, etc, etc, vs your software library being incompatible and requiring the purchasing upgrades.

Just thought that people who're asking a question on this forum, should get the right answer. My pick up and notebook are both oldtimers, but excellent machines.

If the fix would be 800 baht, why wouldn't you give it a try??

And others are talking about pollution nowadays.

OP< try to find a guy, who really knows what a computer really is and how to repair it properly, just go for it. There're quite a few guys who know a lot about computing.>

The right shop and it could be done for almost nothing. Why buying a new one? I'm sorry, might just think in a different way, but why wasting money, if you don't have to?

Buying a new notebook, because it's already 5 years old? Okay, let's send our 69 year old grandma to a place where they take care of her..

And now it's not even at the point to start with any pollution, that such machines are causing, when being produced. And afterwards, of course.

Just do it, man.

[bendejo]

I average about three years to a laptop. Either my own clumsiness (or somebody else's), or the thing starts going sideways, like the Fujitsu I had which died bit by bit (no pun intended). Taking a laptop apart isn't that much of a challenge, but putting it back together IN WORKING ORDER is another thing entirely. I developed a good of understanding of this when some slob (ahem!) spilled coffee cream sugar on my machine and I hade to clean it up and install a new keyboard. Some of the ribbons in there are just not meant to be handled.

And then there are the changes to things in general: you may have bought the machine a year ago, but now you want to swap in a bigger hd to find they don't make drives like any more (this happened to me when SATA came out). Same for DRAM.

OP: time to treat yourself to a new i7. Or i5.

Edited November 2, 2014 by bendejo